ACC vs. SEC in 2009 baseball season

The ever constant debate in the Southeast revolves around tradition, national titles, and conference superiority. This season the ACC and SEC have met 16 times and will meet once more (with three rainouts). Currently, the ACC holds a 9 to 7 edge over the SEC with Tech playing the last SEC game against uga at Turner Field.

The proximity of the two conferences lends itself to constant interconference danceoffs and league comparisons. Here are the results thus far in 2009:

1. Miami swept UF in a 3 game series.
2. FSU took 2 of 3 from Auburn.
3. UF took 2 of 3 from FSU.
4. Georgia swept Clemson in a 2 game series.
5. GT beat Georgia in Athens.
6. South Carolina/Clemson won 2 games a-piece.
7. GT-Tennessee game rained out tonight, which ends any chance of the SEC tying the season series.
8. Tech-Georgia finale at Turner Field.

There's not much to draw from this season's small sample of games other than bragging rights across the cubicle but it's still important in the grand scheme of things to consistently beat your rival and your rival conference.

And in case you bought tickets to the Tech game, you can exchange them for Chattanooga Lookout tickets! Woohoo! What a deal! Anyone keeping a tally on rainouts would note this is the sixth rainout of the season. I'm sure there's a stat book out there somewhere proving this be a GT single season record.

Anyone out there hate the SEC more than me? I doubt it. Bring on the dogs!

Attention High School Basketball Recruits - Watch NBA Playoffs

I was bored this morning and ran a COUNTIF function over the rosters of the 16 NBA playoff teams to see what conference was most represented in the 2009 NBA playoffs starting lineups. Low and behold one conference stood above the rest. Here are my findings:

1. High School/International: 26 players
2. ACC: 13 players
3. Big East: 9 players
4. SEC: 7 players
5. Big 12: 6 players
6. PAC10: 5 players
6. Atlantic 10: 5 players
8. Big 10: 2 players
8. Mountain West: 2 players
8. WAC: 2 players
11. Other: 3 players

If I were an ACC coach, I'd be shoving those numbers in kids' faces every time I visited. Right now the NBA playoffs is really all that's interesting in the sports world since the NFL draft is done and MLB is just starting up. The exposure level for the NBA is at its peak for the year.

And I think this is a huge indictment of the state of Big 10 basketball. The sports programs of the Big 10 with massive fan bases and moneys rollin' in should be putting more talent into the NBA. So goes life. I guess you can't grow speed, height, or jumping ability in the cold.

Any thoughts? Any Hewitt-Haters wanna critique Hewitt's recruitment of NBA one-and-doners? I'm open for anything.

Football reading for those found wanting more

Here's a great entry by Navy blogger Mike. He discusses Paul Johnson and new head coach Ken Niumatalolo's efforts in the wake of Johnson's departure.

Yahoo! has always been my favorite source of sports information but the merger with Rivals is a little annoying. Either way, here's a featurette about Roddy Jones on Rivals. My favorite quote:

...it is amazing we won any games last year," he said. "At the beginning of the year we had some guys make some great plays. When a play would breakdown Josh Nesbitt, Jonathan Dwyer or Demaryius Thomas would go out and make some plays. We were able to win some close games and towards the end of the year when we got used to the offense, things started to click...

This quote is the definition of last season. Josh Nesbitt and Jon Dwyer created big plays early on (BC and VT). The season progressed and we saw some Bebe action (MSU). And finally the A-backs and the offense started to roll (e.g. the U, FSU, and uga).

And since I liked the link about Darryl so much this morning I looked up articles about Michael Johnson and Andrew Gardner.

You better have your reading glasses on.

Tennis Love

Lost among spring football practice and baseball is the sport that claims our only 2 NCAA National Championships, women's tennis. Since that run in 2007, our tennis team has continued to let their presence be felt throughout the NCAA. Their quest for another team title begins Friday at the Bill Moore Tennis Center against Jackson State as the nationally seeded #9 team (out of 16). The winner will face the winner of Ole Miss vs. Denver. This will be their 10th consecutive season in making the tournament.

Once the team championships are over with, the individual tournament begins. Four Yellow Jackets have been selected to battle it out in that competition as well. The highlight of this tournament will be Amanda McDowell as we should all watch her and cheer her on as she fights to defend her title as NCAA Individual Champion. In addition to McDowell, Noelle Hickey, Christie Striplin, and Irina Falconi all earned spots in the tournament. Falconi has earned a National Top-16 Seed.

Chattanooga Lookouts host GT in TN

Baseball
GT is playing the first of two neutral site games on Wednesday night against the Tennessee Volunteers. Tech is playing in Chattanooga, TN at AT&T Field the current home of the Chattanooga Lookouts. The game is slated for 7:15pm and follows an earlier game with the Lookouts hosting the Jacksonville Suns.

The game's importance comes from the fact that it's on a neutral site in GT recruiting areas as well as SEC recruiting areas. Increased exposure to kids that don't normally get to see GT will definitely help out Danny Hall's TN footholds. And Southeast TN is not that far for anyone looking at a possible relocation to Midtown ATL (e.g. high school seniors).

UT is led offensively by Cody Hawn and Blake Forsythe. Both are the only two Vols with double-digit homers at 18 and 13 dingers, respectively. The team is batting 0.284 as a unit. Defensively, the Vols aren't too terribly impressive with a team ERA of 6.05 (compared to Tech's 4.62). If my real fast and rough math is correct, Tech has played UT 78 times and has won 45 of the games including the last meeting in February of 2006. Tech is 1-0 against the SEC this year and a win would definitely help out the ACC come tourney selection time.

Football
Also, here's a link to an article about Darryl Richard from the Boston Herald. Seems the Bostonians appreciate a little GT intellect.

Any thoughts on GT baseball this season? I'm hoping for a seed in the 8-16 range.

A-Rod book links Kevin Brown to HGH...again

The new Alex Rodriguez book "A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez" written by SI writer Selena Roberts delves into the inner workings of A-Rod's supposedly sadistic mind. I'm personally not really that interested in A-Rod or his crazy-ass life but there was a mention of former Georgia Tech pitcher Kevin Brown in the AP article released today.

Brown played at Tech from 1984-1986 before being drafted by the Rangers in '86. Brown is #4 on Tech's all-time win list (28) and innings pitched list (329). He played for six teams during his 19 year MLB career. He won 211 games and recorded over 2,300 strikeouts featuring a 95mph sinking fastball.

Selena claims that Kevin Brown was sharing HGH with A-Rod during Brown's last MLB years. Brown was already listed in the Mitchell Report so this isn't terribly new information about Kevin albeit he denies the claims in the new book through his lawyer.

What annoys me about this situation is:
1) Who pays for all of these crappy book deals? Seems like there wouldn't be enough people to actually buy these books outside of sports journalists to cover the cost of paying an author.
2) How much longer can people ride on the "Bring Down A-Rod" train? I'm tired of A-Rod stories but apparently the media still loves him.

I'm ready to move on. Baseball definitely is ready to move on.

Anyone wanna talk about good news like Stewart Cink's #3 world ranking or Tech athletes graduating? Or Mario's next challenege in defending Lebron James?

Weekend Diamond Reports

Yes everyone, I am alive. I didn't die or get brutally injured. I was just finishing up my finals. Major thanks to Bird for keeping things going. Now on to the important stuff.

Softball:

The GT Softball team finished up a rain shortened series with a 2-game sweep over Maryland in College Park on Saturday. The wins solidify the #1 seed for the ACC Tournament and they will face Virginia starting May 8th in Raleigh.
Note: It's a single elimination tournament so it's literally "Win or Go Home. Go Jackets!

Here is how dominant our softball team has been this year:

Georgia Tech now concludes the regular season having won 13 straight league games and was victorious in all seven ACC series' in 2009 and 10 in a row dating back to last year. Overall, the Yellow Jackets have won 14 of their last 17 games heading into the postseason.

Baseball:

It was a warm-up weekend for the baseball team as the Jackets swept Presbyterian. Sunday was an unleashing of runs as the final score was 23-2. Biggest scare came on Saturday when we needed Jeff Rowland to hit the walk-off home run.

The weekend brought a few changes to the ACC as not everyone played teams like Presbyterian. FSU swept Virginia Tech and took complete control of the Atlantic Divison. The Seminoles have now won 12 in a row and they come to Atlanta this upcoming weekend to end the conference season and to solidify seedings for the tournament. Coastal leader North Carolina has the weekend off.

Current ACC Standings:

ATLANTIC DIVISION
School	Conference	Pct.	Overall	Pct.
Florida State	18-7-0	.720	33-12-0	.733
Clemson	16-11-0	.593	32-16-0	.667
Boston College	12-13-0	.480	29-19-0	.604
NC State	8-16-0	.333	22-26-0	.458
Maryland	7-20-0	.259	23-26-0	.469
Wake Forest	6-18-0	.250	21-24-0	.467
COASTAL DIVISION
School	Conference	Pct.	Overall	Pct.
North Carolina	16-7-0	.696	35-11-0	.761
Georgia Tech	14-7-1	.659	31-11-1	.733
Virginia	13-8-1	.614	35-9-1	.789
Miami	15-12-0	.556	31-16-0	.660
Duke	12-12-0	.500	29-17-0	.630
Virginia Tech	10-16-0	.385	27-20-0	.57

Once again, it's gonna be a huge upcoming weekend.....